PlayStation has been around for more than 25 years and during that time Sony’s gaming platform has had enough ups and downs. Now that the fifth console is approaching, we thought it was time to take a look at the different highs and lows of PlayStation, one more significant than the other. Below you will find part 2, read here Part 1. –
If there is anything that we will never understand, it is the crazy marketing campaigns that Sony once ran. Strange and sincere scary commercials appeared regularly with people confessing their sins, a haunted house with moving organs and a disturbed, howling baby doll. The company also persuaded Twin Peaks director David Lynch to make a kind of found footage video about a girl with eyes on the sides of her head that scared people. Nobody knows why they were so bizarre, but they certainly didn’t convince people to buy a PlayStation.
Anyway, in 2007 a God of War party took place with a dead goat.
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In 2016, Sony competed with Oculus and HTC by releasing the PlayStation VR a few months after the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. Although the expectations in advance were not particularly high, the PSVR proves that you do not necessarily need the best hardware to offer a good vr experience. Five million units of glasses were sold, making it probably the best-selling vr glasses to date.
In the meantime there are enough reasons to go specifically for the PSVR, such as Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Moss and Blood & Truth and a lot of third-party titles. The potential of the PSVR is still far from being fully exploited, but the headset clearly contributes to the growth of virtual reality as a medium.
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Building on the PlayStation Vita, Sony launched the PlayStation TV in 2013, a small device that lets you play Vita games on the TV and stream games from a PS4. What started as a good idea unfortunately unfortunately quickly became one of the biggest flops in Sony’s history. Because of the touchscreen and touchpad function of the Vita, the games that people wanted to play on their TV without the handheld were incompatible, such as Uncharted and Gravity Rush, which made the functionality fall considerably into the water. Streaming PS4 games was also disappointing due to the resolution of 720p, apps like Netflix were missing and the menu – which was designed for the Vita’s touchscreen – was pretty awkward. No wonder nobody wanted PlayStation TV.
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The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console ever and therefore a huge triumph for Sony. A big factor here was the price of DVD players; these devices were on average twice as expensive as the PlayStation 2, which also played just DVDs. The choice was therefore made quickly for many consumers. Another factor was of course the fantastic line-up of games, which was at home in all markets.
Children whose parents bought a PS2 had enough to choose from, while legendary titles such as God of War, SSX, Timesplitters, Kingdom Hearts and the three-dimensional Grand Theft Auto games persuaded fanatic gamers to bring the console into their home. While the first PlayStation promoted the acceptance of gaming as a hobby, the successor ensured that the mainstream audience was reached.
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At the end of the PSP’s life cycle, Sony released a latest version of the handheld: the PSP Go. The device still looks and looks great and is nice and compact thanks to an extendable screen. The most important feature of the Go was the fact that the UMD drive was missing, meaning that games could only be purchased digitally. Although we are no longer surprised by it today, it was not well received at the time by gamers who had piles of UMDs.
The idea that games had to be purchased again to play on the Go was out of the question. In addition, the wifi functionalities were poor, which meant that downloading a game soon took an hour. Retail chains were logically on the consumer’s side, for example by not even putting the model on the shelves because they missed out on the sale of physical games. In addition, the PSP-3000 was cheaper than the PSP Go, which cost $ 250. In retrospect, the Go was far ahead of its time, but it did lead to a tragic downfall.
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At the time of PlayStation and PlayStation 2, Sony regularly released demo discs: discs with demos of upcoming games. Some of these were absolute gems, with demos for classics such as Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. In 2004, Sony stopped the Holiday Demo Disc at the popular PlayStation Underground magazine, with demos for Jak 3, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Star Wars Battlefront, among others.
The demo for Viewtiful Joe 2 was also on the disk, a seemingly nice taste of the game. But nothing could be further from the truth: when players specifically started this demo, their memory cards became completely deleted. Yes, all saved data for Final Fantasy 10 or GTA: San Andreas had completely disappeared. Sony sent a card with sincere apologies to magazine subscribers, but the damage had already been done.
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You can’t actually make a list of highlights from the history of PlayStation without mentioning the games themselves. Over the years, countless titles have been released that we will never forget, such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Colossus, Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, God of War and more many more titles. It is a unique history of games, with something for every kind of gamer. Because we have so many good memories of these games, Sony generally deserves praise. Hats off.
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Certainly when users did not pay monthly for the PlayStation Network, there were regular problems. Nothing makes it to the big PSN hack of April 2011, perhaps the biggest disaster in the history of PlayStation. After PSN was offline for a few days, Sony confirmed that an external party had access to the network and the data of 77 million users had been stolen.
Let that sink for a moment: addresses, passwords, credit card details and telephone numbers of 77 million users were stolen. Sony called on users to change and check all passwords and block credit cards. The news went across the world and Sony went deeply through the dust during a press conference. As a saving grace, players received a number of free games and a month of free PlayStation Plus, and most importantly, it unveiled a “new” PlayStation Network with improved security. The burglary cost hundreds of millions of dollars and it took a long time before the reputation of Sony was restored.
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